It is Monday evening in Washington. Jannis and I are walking exhausted through the “Old Town” and have just mistaken a Methodist church for the Supreme Court. The day began with Oprah Winfrey, who shared some general wisdom on the meaning of life and presented some challenges to the event’s time management and moderator. However, it was a very engaging appearance.
The conference day ended for me with a rather uninspiring presentation on Subject-Matter Experts and how to get them to create slightly more sensible – meaning didactically sound – training programs. This is precisely our business, and honestly, I was quite disappointed here. It seemed friendly enough, but it was a 90s concept. The slides looked as if the two colleagues could urgently use some support themselves. What was interesting about this workshop, which wasn’t really a workshop: The room was packed, even though it was the last session of the day.
In the USA, the collaboration between instructional designers and subject matter experts has long been formalized in the design process for learning events. In our country, this clear separation of roles is only gradually catching on. But let me rewind to the beginning of the day.
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Breakfast with Oprah
Oprah Winfrey definitely did not run for president because she repeatedly emphasized how incapable she is as a manager. I found the story of her first termination – her first termination meeting – very engaging: It lasted two hours and was so empathetic that the employee simply did not understand that she had been fired, and then asked again: What, you’re firing me now? Oprah decided that she would let others conduct these conversations from then on.
The beginning of her career was also interesting. She had worked in the news business for several years until she was told that it was all just too emotional. She was then shunted into the talk show business. That wasn’t the worst demotion. When she gave up her own show a few years ago and then participated in 60 Minutes, she was again accused of being too emotional. It started with the way she pronounced her name. And she remembered the beginning of her career and said she didn’t have to make the same mistake again.
That was also a clear message: If you don’t learn something in life, the challenge will keep coming back. Otherwise, there was also a plea for true leadership and for intuition, and for listening to one’s own intuition. And we could certainly see that this woman truly has many fans. The greeting alone began with a standing ovation. Such a start in front of 15,000 or 20,000 people (we didn’t count exactly) is not bad at all, and I admit that it would also be appealing to start my training sessions or presentations that way.
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Ebbinghaus Meets AI
Afterward, the exhibition opened, and if the first day was about combating forgetting, it can be said from the exhibition hall that the motto could be: Ebbinghaus meets Artificial Intelligence. Lots of digital helpers, supposedly new platform solutions that are supposed to guarantee better learning transfer. Experts in the workshops, however, pointed out that this is not always the case and that not every insight supposedly derived directly from neuroscience is actually true. For example, Ken Nowak, whom I met last year and whose joint research with Paul Zak on trust in companies as a basic prerequisite for good performance, I can only recommend to everyone.
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Lots of Dutch companies.
Once again, I realized that our neighbors – who have such a pleasant demeanor – are extremely innovative when it comes to learning, learning design, and technologies related to learning. I may or may not have found the perfect jackpot solution. That remains to be seen. But 10,000 euros in licensing costs from a provider based in Utah: I still have to consider whether we will do that. After all, the nerds for the agile manifesto also met in Utah back then. Perhaps that’s a good omen.
In between, I only saw Elliott Masie, a veteran of the Learning and Development scene. He also produces Broadway musicals, made a few old jokes at the expense of LMS and e-learning, and presented clever thoughts on artificial intelligence. Above all, we should ask ourselves: Where could artificial intelligence actually make a meaningful contribution? One idea: Imagine all the PowerPoints in your companies being automatically tagged before saving. Approaches to this already exist. This is, of course, a sensible application for artificial intelligence, quite pragmatically.
Otherwise, Elliott did a lot of promotion for his future trips to China and Japan, and Jannis and I noticed in the evening that we had seen many visitors from Asia. What we missed a bit, however, was a program item on the topic: What are the actual cultural differences, for example, in classroom training between Japan, China, Brazil, and Europe and the USA, and what does that really mean for global programs?
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We are waiting for the thunderstorm, which is not announced in the weather app but is clearly visible in the sky (wouldn’t be bad, because it’s incredibly humid, still feels like 39 degrees, and high humidity) and are looking forward to starting tomorrow morning with Seth Godin, a marketing freak who is also a diligent blogger: 7,000 posts he has published on his own blog. 19 books in 35 countries, and I haven’t read any of them. Jannis has at least bought one. We are excited.
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